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COBIT® 5 - IT Governance Framework

One question though. You write: "An example need state could be "How do I found out the best software for rankings?" and this could be mapped to the awareness phase of the consumer decision journey."

Is that really a need? Is it not merely a solution to a need? The real, underlying need could be something like "How do I know if I am wasting money on SEO?" Or "How do I know if I am following behind my competitors?" And rank tracking would be a solution to this need. I think this is pretty important as we tend to overlook disruptive potential by addressing needs too narrowly/moving to solution mode too quickly.

This is definitely a great point. However I think there's levels to needs.

You can have an overarching need or goal which is made up of a bunch of smaller needs. I think it's important to break the goals into smaller needs to get from the strategic plan to the tactical level and map needs to keywords to ultimately define the content strategy.

I think a lot gets lost in translation sometimes when we don't do that. For example if we stayed at the "How do I know if I am wasting money on SEO?" level of the need that's quite broad and is good for defining messaging, but not necessarily good for identifying the keywords that match that intent.

I definitely agree with you that it's in our nature to focus too narrowly and there needs to be more strategic thinking, but in this case I kinda just cut to the tactical level because there is a ton of strategic thinking here. I'll definitely follow up with more on user journeys.